The Art Collection received a visually stunning donation in February: Georgetown from the Virginia Shore, by Bradley Stevens (b. 1954), a gift of James Hayes, C’56.
Painted in 1987, the impressive four-by-six-foot Georgetown from the Virginia Shore joins the Library’s distinguished collection of views of Georgetown from the 1830s to the present. The artist has been, in fact, an adjunct professor at Georgetown; most of his academic career was spent as a professor of drawing and painting at his alma mater, George Washington University.
A follower of the prominent local "realist" landscape painter William Woodward, Stevens reflects his mentor’s care in capturing the varieties of delicate light in his paintings. Georgetown from the Virginia Shore depicts a distant "hilltop" at dawn framed by towering trees on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, soft sunlight dappling the trunks as a double-sculler is rowed against the current in the foreground. The artist has said of his paintings, "It is simply the beauty of nature that humbles, sustains, and reminds us just how good it is to be alive."
Georgetown from the Virginia Shore was donated to the University on the occasion of Mr. Hayes' fiftieth reunion year. The painting now hangs across from the entrance to Riggs Library; the previous occupant of that wall, The Boar Hunt by Roelant Saverij (see Summer 2003 Library Associates Newsletter), was returned to The Vault.